Gene Marks Is Back And Better Than Ever

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Monday, 14 of January , 2008 at 7:55 am

Gene Marks wrote an article in BusinessWeek that drew the ire of every SEO and Internet marketer in the business. All you had to do was Google his name and you’d see the backlash. Even my post about him hit Page 1 on Google.

Interestingly, there’s at least one person agreeing with him and search marketer Jaan Kanellis is taking issue with that defender on yesterday’s WebProNews.

I’ll have to agree with Jaan Kanellis again. The only reason Gene Marks wrote the article that he did was to get link bait. Either that or the man is a total and complete idiot.

I focused my last article about him on his misrepresentation and lack of understanding of SEO. But he was wrong on so many other counts as well. Jaan Kanellis only mentions a few of them in his latest article:

• RSS
• Blogs
• SEO
• CRM
• PPC
• Web 2.0

Interestingly, Jaan and I both agree with Gene Marks’ comments regarding Web 2.0 and CRM. So we really don’t have an argument on those points with Gene Marks or with Adam Senour. CRM is pretty much useless for most small businesses. A simple spreadsheet will meet most of your needs. And hardly anyone can agree on the definition of Web 2.0. It’s just some buzzword that some marketers are capitalizing on to make themselves appear more important.

But blogs, RSS, SEO, and PPC are marketing tools and strategies that anyone and everyone can benefit from. OK, maybe you’re not interested in running PPC campaigns, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t benefit from it if you were. Blogs are such simple tools to run and operate that Adam Senour’s comment about the time it takes to maintain a blog is simply ludicrous. But I love Jaan’s point even more:

If you’re not willing to learn and work with the components that make the web what it is then forget about all together. Keep yourself in a box far, far away from technology.

The bottom line is this: Are you using the tools of the Web most effectively? Most small businesses are not. There are things they can do to improve their marketing effectiveness as well as their efficiency. Tools like RSS feeds allow you to do that. Instead of spending hours visiting blogs just to see if you want to read what they have to offer today, you can get all of your news feeds in one place and scroll through them to see which ones you do want to read and which ones you don’t want to mess with. Is that a time saver? You bet it is. A huge one. So why ignore it?

Gene Marks doesn’t have a clue. Neither does anyone who is defending him.

Category: Internet Marketing, SEO Myths, SEO Tools

• Add this post to Del.icio.us - Digg